Sucked into loving the polar vortex

Saturday

Jan 11, 2014 at 6:00 AMJan 11, 2014 at 9:45 AM

By George Barnes TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

You may have thought last week we were experiencing some winter weather, but you were wrong.

We were sucked into a giant (and I am stealing this term from a slightly schlocky Syfy original movie) ice twister. In NOAA terms guaranteed to panic the populace and send journalists rushing to their dust-covered science books, we were caught in a polar vortex.

The first time I heard the term, I was excited and a little nervous because it sounded a lot like something Star Trek's USS Enterprise would have been trapped in somewhere in the Delta Quadrant, being slowly pulled to its doom.

As I found out by conducting my usual haphazard research on the Internet and using my Magic 8 Ball, there are a lot of different vortices, in space, in your kitchen sink, in Kansas and even in your Wormtown Wintah Ale if you stir your finger in it.

There is also a celebrated vortex in Oregon, which causes people to appear to be leaning toward the north and causes an optical illusion making a person standing next to another of equal height appear to be much taller.

The vortex in Oregon is apparently a whirling gravitational-like force. It is also a tourist attraction and has its own website, www.oregonvortex.com.

Basically any vortex is a whirling force, much like a tornado. The polar vortices are like a giant ice tornado that normally whirl over the Arctic and Antarctica, terrorizing polar bears and fur seals. What happened this past week was either that the arctic vortex naturally dipped down to places like Greensboro, N.C., causing water main breaks, dead car batteries and a chorus of complaints on Facebook, or it was all a liberal conspiracy to deflect attention from Obamacare.

The second scenario was proposed by Rush Limbaugh, the voice of conservative reason, who posted his scientifically based thesis on his Web page.

Apparently, and I will paraphrase Mr. Limbaugh, liberal journalists were able to expand the arctic vortex — possibly using two fingers, like focusing an iPhone camera. Causing people to forget the Affordable Care Act is the real story.

Although I normally believe everything Mr. Limbaugh says is correct, I have it on good information from Wikipedia that he was wrong this time. The droop of the polar vortex is a real phenomenon that had little to do with Obamacare and less to do with being liberal. It was more about, "The sky is falling! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"

The naturally occurring (not liberally inspired) bitter pill swallowed by millions of Americans literally caused Hell to freeze over. In Hell, Mich., temperatures dropped to minus 26 degrees, possibly causing Satan to wear two pairs of long underwear to work. It was worse in Minnesota, where minus 40 degrees was recorded and people said, "What's the big deal?"

But we in the liberal media were loving watching people's ears freeze off. The cold led to hundreds of stories about what to wear in bad weather, how to care for your cat, why you should not touch your tongue to a metal pole when it is 15 below zero and how to start your car when it is literally a useless chunk of ice.

This year's overactive polar vortex has also been inspirational and could someday spawn an entire religion. On YouTube, a video was posted showing a wet T-shirt freezing in one minute. Fortunately, no one was wearing the shirt. There was also an article titled "Freezing Urine and Five Other Polar Vortex Experiments." Along with the urine experiment, the article helpfully suggested freezing a trampoline, freezing an egg in a fry pan, freezing a T-shirt, freezing bubbles and freezing squirt gun water.

And as weather improves, for now, panic subsides and the vortex slides back to Canada, we can smile again and head outside wearing our "Polar Vortex 2014 Midwest Tour" T-shirts.

Contact George Barnes at george.barnes@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter @georgebarnesTG

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